


Two Lonely Soldiers

by VincentMeoblinn



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sad Ending, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:44:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VincentMeoblinn/pseuds/VincentMeoblinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> What might have happened if John and Sherlock had never met. WARNING. SAD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Lonely Soldiers

 

 

_Lestrade,_

_I’ve been soundly beaten._

_SH_

That was it. From the man who always had to have the last word and be right about everything, that was it. I’ve been beaten so I give up. Had he thought it was a competition? Sherlock Holmes against the world? Had he thought once his ‘winning streak’ ended that he’d just bugger off to heaven or hell or wherever mad geniuses went?

Lestrade sighed and ran a finger through his hair. This was his second suicide today, but it was hitting him a hell of a lot harder than other suicides. Not only was this suicide personal- he’d known the man for many years- but it was more than just a waste of a life. It was a waste of a mind that could have _changed_ their world, could have made it a better and safer place.

Sherlock Holmes had been the most brilliant and beautiful man he’d ever known; mad as a hatter and annoying as fuck, but brilliant beyond anything he’d ever heard of outside of a television drama and as stunning as a movie star. The man had been solving cases for him for years, ever since Lestrade hauled him out of the gutter his drug habit had landed him in, and all it took was a glance at a crime scene that had baffled an entire crew of his best people before he was off like a shot after some criminal mastermind. Now he lay, bloated from the days he had laid in his flat rotting, with a needle jetting out of one discolored arm. Gone was the beautiful whiplash thin man with bouncing dark curls and sea foam green eyes; gone was the sarcasm, intelligence, the sheer _audacity_ that had made him Sherlock; gone was the chance to change great man hovering on the edge something dark and undefined to something… more… something wholesome and at peace. So young. So beautiful. So utterly self destructive.

Still, he should have seen this coming. The cabbie a few months back had offered him a choice between two pills and Sherlock had just _taken_ one! That he’d been right had meant little to Lestrade, he’d been horrified the man had risked poisoning himself just to see if he could outwit a criminal. A _common_ criminal! Now Sherlock had been outmaneuvered by this Moriarty fellow- some weeks back- when he’d decided to abduct Mrs. Hudson and wrap her in symtech at some pool, but Lestrade had thought Sherlock would view it as a challenge. Apparently the man no longer had enough to hold on to and face a real challenge.

Lestrade gave Mrs. Hudson’s door a sad glance as he passed it on the way back out of 221 Baker Street. The poor woman; her last hours had seen her strapped to a bomb by a mad man who had apparently not found her entertaining enough to keep alive. Sherlock had barely escaped with his life, but that had been sheer happenstance; He’d just been out of the main blast radius and Moriarty hadn’t gotten any of his people to shoot him. Perhaps it would have been better if Sherlock had died a tragic hero than a washed out junkie.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Lestrade collapsed into his desk and allowed himself a moment to shed a few tears for his fallen comrade. Then he pushed it down so he could face the rest of the day. Sally had suggested he go home, but to what? His cheating wife and disgruntled, ungrateful kids? At least he didn’t have to tell next of kin about Sherlock. The poor posh bastard had found him and been the one to call it in. It was the first time Lestrade had ever heard him sound anything besides cold and calculating. Mycroft hadn’t even had to explain, that trembling aristocratic voice on the phone had been enough warning.

Lestrade pulled the first suicide’s file up and gave it a glance over. He wasn’t driving the fuck out to Dublin to see the sister, so he dialed up the phone number listed for ‘next of kin’.

“Hello?” A slurred voice answered the phone. Bit early to be drunk, but it was sounding better and better to one DI Lestrade.

“Hello, may I speak to Harry Watson?”

“This is Harriet Watson. Who is this? You sound like a cop.”

Lestrade groaned inwardly. _Another addict of some sort._

“Yes, this is Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Are you home at the moment?”

“No.”

“Can you get home? I need to send an officer to meet you and discuss something with you.”

“I’ve been walking home from the pub! I haven’t had a single drop while driving! I just got my fucking license back yesterday!” The irate woman shouted.

“This isn’t about that…”

“I’m so fucking sick and tired of you _pigs_ showing up, wrecking my marriage…”

“This is about your brother, John Watson.”

“What about Johnny?” She snapped, still not cottoning on.

 “It would be best if one of our officers met and spoke with you. When can you be at home? Or perhaps we can meet you at a friends house?”

“Oh, god, he’s dead isn’t he?” She had gone from tough wanna-be streetwise bitch to being shaky-voiced and near tears in a heartbeat. She sounded so young. Was she Sherlock’s age? The file didn’t say.

Well, that had been well and truly bungled. It was against policy to disclose a family member’s death over the phone, but he didn’t think he’d manage to talk his way out of it now. He hated this part.

 “Are you driving right now?”

“Just tell me! Do you have any idea what it was like when he shipped out? Wondering if he’d make it back alive? Then getting that knock at the door when he’d been shot?! Then wondering if he’d make it onto the plane out of a fucking _warzone_!? Just fucking tell me!”

“Yes, I’m afraid he... I’m so sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Lestrade replied, feeling unaccountably choked up.

“Oh, god… I… what happened? Was it a mugger? No, Johnny could take a mugger, even an armed one. Shit he… he did himself in, didn’t he?” She asked, and her voice was becoming angry again.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid a lot of soldiers that come back just can’t acclimate…”

“That bastard! He had no right! How could he do this to me?!”

Lestrade prepared to sit and listen, as he would have if he were in person, and simply made non-committal sounds. Eventually she finally ran out of words to scream and dissolved into helpless sobs, so he asked her to go to a friend’s house. Once he got an address to check up on her at he got off the line and rung up the local precinct in Dublin. They assured him they’d send a car out right away to handle the job properly, but his supervisor would be hearing about how he’d messed that call up.

Lestrade stood with a sigh, stretching out his stiff back, which had locked up when he’d been on the call with the Watson girl. Days like this he would trade anything to be in someone else’s shoes, even that homeless bugger he gave a coffee to every morning. Still, he’d never do what Sherlock and that Watson fellow had done. There was something to be said for sticking it out and seeking out a better future, making a better life than the one you’d been handed. He wasn’t sure if he’d call what they’d done to themselves as the ‘easy way out’; surely a drug overdose and a bullet to the brain weren’t easy, if only for those first few steps before their respective triggers were pulled; but it certainly wasn’t the _right_ way out. Better to go out kicking and screaming, or peaceful in your sleep from old age, or scaring the shit out of your old lady by keeling over at the dinner table during your third helping of fish and chips.

Lestrade let himself chuckle a bit at that last image. If he bothered to stay with that harpy of a wife of his, maybe he’d aim for a coronary. It sounded doable; all he had to do was eat the way he wanted instead of the way she did and he’d be well on his way, and happier, too.

Lestrade shut both files and slipped them into his ‘out’ pile, knowing full well that a PC would file them away and he’d never glance at them again. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t remember though. No, this day would be ingrained in Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade’s mind for the rest of his life as the day that _two_ fine soldiers – one of the Queens Army and the other of the world - ended their own lives for lack of someone to love. Because one glance at that empty bedsit had told him why John Watson had chosen to eat his own gun, and Sherlock… Sherlock was probably the loneliest person Lestrade had ever known.

_I wonder if it would have been different had they met? Would they have given each other a reason to live? A reason to stay safe? A reason to keep fighting the good fight?_ Lestrade chuckled at his fanciful thoughts; _this is Sherlock we’re talking about. I doubt a corner-tucking soldier/doctor would be able to manage him._

“Sir?” Sergeant Sally Donovan interrupted his thoughts, “We’ve got an urgent one. Mr. Holmes… Mycroft Holmes… Is on the line. Something about ‘The Woman’ and an assassination?”

“On my way.”


End file.
